Trust thy neighbor?

Coach Thomas Doll falls into the upraised arms of his players as part of an exercise to build team trust during a training session for Hamburger SV on August 7, 2006. - Friedemann Vogel/Bongarts/Getty Images

An important part of doing business with someone is trusting them. Research published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics
looks at how much business people in different European countries trust each other.

The results: Almost everyone has a high level of trust for the Swedes and almost not very much trust for the Italians.

The table below displays the average level of trust from citizens of a country (rows) to citizens of a country (columns). 1 = no trust at all; 2 = not very much trust; 3 = some trust; 4 = a lot of trust.